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Steven Robert
United States
Altadena
California
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Dust Devils is a rules-light storytelling game that focuses on tales of redemption in the Old West. The elegant system both cleaves close to the source material (poker hands for task resolution!) and does a great job generating stories of inner demons and redemption. It takes role-playing in several unusual directions, but it is sufficiently clever that everyone should at least give it a read!
Characters
Characters have four quantitative and several descriptive characteristics. The former (rated 1-5) are Hand, Eye, Guts, and Heart; players assign points to them as they wish. The latter include two Traits (similar to FATE's aspects, phrases such as “Tough as nails”) and a Past and a Present (also descriptive words or phrases).
Finally, all characters have a Devil, which is the ugly side of their personality or past that they are trying to fight: appropriate examples include any of the seven mortal sins. At the beginning of each session, players assign scores of 1-3 to their Devil, representing its current strength.
Gameplay
Play proceeds in a series of scenes set up by the Dealer (a GM, though the game is intrinsically collaborative). The game is essentially storytelling until a conflict arises, when a formal resolution system – centered around a poker deck – takes over. The object is to build the best poker hand. First, each player announces his or her character’s goals and determines their opponents in the conflict. The Dealer then determines which two of each character’s attributes are most relevant and deals the player a number of cards equal to the sum of those two attributes as a starting hand. Players can get extra cards if one of their Traits is relevant, if they act in accordance with their Devil (equal to its current rating), or by spending chips (see below) – however, they lose cards if they act against their Devil! Finally, players can trade in cards and draw new ones if their Past or Present is relevant.
The player with the best poker hand “wins” a conflict. But the Narrator – who actually describes the effects, and need not be the Dealer – is the player with the single highest card in their poker hand, providing a very interesting twist. The narration is fairly free, although the winner must achieve their goals, and the “Harm” to each character is fixed by the cards: the winner’s hand inflicts damage on the attributes of the loser. These consequences therefore make the loser more likely to lose subsequent conflicts – which, as we shall see, is sort of the point of the game!
In essence, this works like a dice pool mechanic, because “stronger” characters (or those with more appropriate backgrounds) receive more opportunities to build a good poker hand but have no guarantees of victory. I like the sense of gambling here, but I’d like it even more if there were some mechanism to raise the stakes and incorporate even a stronger sense of it.
Characters recover from Harm by spending poker chips, which are typically earned by acting counter to their Traits or Devil (or in a bet on the results of a conflict). However, recovery is long and expensive. Again, that is sort of the point, because the idea behind the game is that characters will inevitably succumb to their Devils. The interesting storytelling question is whether they can redeem themselves or others in the process.
Once one of a player character’s attributes reaches zero, their end is near. The next time the character becomes involved in a conflict that involves this attribute will be their last one. The player automatically becomes Narrator and gets some bonuses to help ensure a memorable – but not necessarily successful – end. Most interestingly, the dying player gets an opportunity to not only harm other characters but also redeem, or heal them. The goal is for this scene to be a powerful one, and the game mechanics work well to ensure that.
Extras
The book contains a fair amount of advice (as well as a sample scenario), which is quite useful – this is not a “typical” RPG, after all, and it’s definitely not a modernized Boot Hill made to power generic Western games. Instead, the ultimate fate of every character is death; there is no mechanical success, just a good ending and possibly redemption through the story. Players really need to buy in to this goal so that they don’t fight the inevitable too hard. It’s also a collaborative game – although there is a “Dealer,” who sets up some of the story, every player can be Narrator of the important conflicts. And finally, it is an antagonistic game – player characters can easily face off against each other, and some groups won’t enjoy that.
For those of us unfamiliar with the mythos of Westerns, the book also contains a handy guide to its history and good movies, novels, and characters that can inspire a Dust Devils game. This is focused on stories appropriate to the game, so it is far from comprehensive, but it provides a very good feel for the kinds of stories to tell.
This updated edition also includes three variant rules and settings, which port the game to new genres. These include Deathwish, about conflicted spies in the Cold War, RONIN, about warriors in feudal Japan, and Concrete Jungles, about unsavory urban characters. These all “reskin” the main rules to fit the genre, and tinker with the details. The first and last work well; RONIN is a good idea (especially given the connections between samurai films and westerns), but the idea of resolving samurai duels with poker hands just doesn’t work for me. But note that these are brief guides to modifying the game for different stories; they are by no means complete “settings.”
Summary
In summary, Dust Devils is a unique, well-constructed game tailored to a very specific – but compelling – kind of story. The use of poker hands provides a flavorful and rich conflict resolution mechanism, and the mechanical import of the Devil makes it a powerful game. Rules and character creation are streamlined and straightforward, and they won’t get in the way of the game. Provided your group will buy into this type of story, you can tell some truly memorable stories of devils and redemption.
Note: I received a free review copy (in pdf form) of this title through DriveThruRPG.com.
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vestige wrote: RONIN is a good idea (especially given the connections between samurai films and westerns), but the idea of resolving samurai duels with poker hands just doesn’t work for me.
You could use Hanafuda cards instead -- draw a hand and total the points to see who wins. "Sake cup and maple defeat the geese in flight."
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